Biden rejects probe that found White House, state resisted military’s Afghan exit plan

Washington, Feb 11 (Agency) US President Joe Biden said he rejects an Army investigative report that found the White House and State Department resisted the Department of Defense’s efforts to put together a better plan to evacuate US embassy personnel and Afghan allies weeks before Kabul fell to the Taliban. Biden added that there was no good time to get out of Afghanistan and there was no way the United States would be able to unite Afghanistan. The Washington Post reported on Tuesday, citing an Army investigative report, that the White House and the State Department hindered efforts by US military leaders to prepare evacuation of embassy personnel and allies from Afghanistan for weeks before Kabul’s fall, underestimating the swift advance of the Taliban.

Navy Rear Adm Peter Vasely, the top US commander on the ground during the operation, was quoted in the 2,000-page report as saying that the American military would have been “much better prepared to conduct a more orderly” evacuation “if policymakers had paid attention to the indicators of what was happening on the ground.” The report also documented the until now unknown violence American personnel faced; for example, one exchange of gunfire during which two Taliban fighters were killed after allegedly threatening a group of US marines and Afghan civilians, and another incident in which US soldiers killed a member of an elite Afghan strike unit and wounded six others after they fired on the Americans.

Moreover, the document says that in July, Marine Corps Brig Gen Farrell J Sullivan wanted to prepare supplies to host 5,000 evacuees at the Kabul airport, but he was not allowed to discuss the possibility of a full-scale evacuation with anyone other than British officials. American military leaders said that administration officials feared that if the United States raised alarm, it would prompt other governments to quickly leave Afghanistan and would accelerate the fall of the government in Kabul. The report also revealed that on August 9, Biden’s advisers convened to discuss a possible closure of the embassy, but unanimously agreed it was still “premature.”